The problem is that we’re putting a global economy with present value of $2,000 trillion at risk to go after less than $4 trillion of expected present value of benefit. The desire to regulate the global economy to avoid the risk of catastrophic climate change is not a one-sided bet.

Anybody outside California is asked to ponder this: Do you really want the whole country going the way this state is going?

Resign, shut up, and just go away, you bastard. You’re lucky your wife doesn’t exercise her Second Amendment rights. (In my dad’s day women who did so got judgments of “justifiable homicide”.) You’ve ruined your own family, dishonored your kids, and I’ll thank you kindly not to drag what’s left of the Republican Party down the sewer with you.

“What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily — fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there,” Sanford told members of his cabinet in a session called so he could apologize to them in person and tell them the business of government must continue.

Yeah. Let it continue without you, you schmuck. If you want to repent, go do it on your own time.

Apparently the number of “Global Warming Deniers” (I prefer “skeptics of anthropogenic climate change” are swelling.

I’ll follow the data. When enough scientists not working for a systemically-corrupt political agency present compelling evidence, and can explain why the temperature of the earth has been going up and down for at least hundreds of millions of years without our help, I’ll believe that we’re changing the climate.

The next challenge will be convincing me that warming the planet a few degrees is a bad thing since, historically, it’s been a very good thing.

But I’m not holding my breath for a global crisis whose solution just happens not to be socialism, higher taxes, or dismantling capitalism.

Let’s hope that a lot of Senators visit The One’s office before the vote.

Now, do not confuse me with somebody who cares very much what editorialists in Der Spiegel or other outposts of the European chattering classes think of any American president. I could not care less, in no small part because I believe that the interests of such people generally diverge from mine own. I note, however, that many of the cosmopolitan Americans who voted for Barack Obama did so because they were embarrassed by the Bush administration’s reputation among foreigners, particularly European elites. They hated having to explain themselves over dinner in Paris, Brussels, and Frankfurt, and worried that most Europeans would not understand that we are not all unnuanced rubes. I therefore wonder how such people will react if anti-Obama sentiment in Europe grows to the point where they have to explain themselves all over again. Will they rise in Barack Obama’s defense, agree with the foreign critique but deny that they voted for him, or explode from the cognitive dissonance?

28 June, 2009

Col. Kenneth L. Reusser, USMC Retired, known as the most decorated aviator in history has died. He was shot down in three wars.

In 1945, while based in Okinawa, he stripped down his F4U-4 Corsair fighter and intercepted a Japanese observation plane at a high altidude. When his guns froze, he flew his fighter into the observation plane, hacking off its tail with his propeller.

In 1950 in Korea led an attack on a North Korean tank-repair facility at Inchon, then destroyed an oil tanker almost blowing himself out of the sky.

In Vietnam he flew helicopters and was leading a rescue mission when his Huey was shot down. He needed skin grafts over 35 percent of his badly burned body.

The moral? If you’re going to sell homeopathic medicine – and boy, is it a lucrative business – make sure that you don’t put anything in there except sterile water. That’ll cut down on your expenses, too, since most ingredients cost more than water, anyway. Stick with that strategy, and you can be absolutely sure that nothing bad will happen to your customers. Nothing good will happen to them either, but they won’t know that. When their cold/headache/whatever goes away of its own accord, they’ll ascribe it to your miracle product. Sit back and profit! Be sure to thank Senator Hatch while you count your money, though – it’s only proper.

Orrin Hatch has done a lot of stupid things, but his part in exempting “dietary supplements” from FDA approval is one of the stupidest. He has damaged the health of who knows how many Americans just so his buddies could sell snake oil.

His argument sounds libertarian:

So Hatch fired back at the IOC, saying that athletes could not blame their bad drug tests on him, or on the supplement industry, which he claimed was properly regulated in the U.S. “I am tired of this childish finger-pointing,” Hatch said. “The last time I checked, neither the prince nor the athletes were experts in food and drug law.”

I’d argue that policing the science behind medicine is part of the “referee” function of government. The FDA doesn’t ban anything, it simply provides a gating function for what claims people can make for their products. You want to claim a drug cures a specific disease? Fine. Just follow the steps needed to show efficacy and safety. The claims for “dietary supplements” range from useless and vague to outright lies, usually tending toward the latter. Confusion will naturally result when quack pills are placed on shelves next to FDA-approved medicines. Every customer can’t be an expert in food and drugs, either.

Actions have consequences.

Thanks to Hatch, the U.S. now has standards as low as those in many Third World countries for the sale of many products with serious, pharmacological effects. The results have been deadly. Between 1993 and 1998, the FDA linked at least 184 deaths to dietary supplements, which are now suspected of contributing to the sudden deaths of three football players in August.

The fact is, conservatives living and working among the liberals, among them but not of them, are not unlike field reporters for “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”; we know them better than they know themselves. Since there is an approved left-of-center position on every subject — just check out The New York Times or NPR — We know in advance how they’ll react to every controversy, every utterance by a public figure; we anticipate, politically and public policy-wise, their sighs, their frowns, their ups, their downs.

This is a lot what it’s like at work, except that most people I work with are much nicer. While I don’t care what others think, and don’t make my libertarian/conservative views a secret, I know of many conservatives who keep their heads down. I get private emails all the time saying, “I”m glad you said that.”

It’s really sad that Liberals are really the most intolerant people on the planet. Well, next to Islamists, I guess. Maybe that’s why He gets along with them so well.

27 June, 2009

I’m on record as thinking Richard Dawkins has made some serious errors in his Atheism outreach. This, however, strikes me as a good idea.

The emphasis on critical thinking is epitomised by a test called the Invisible Unicorn Challenge. Children will be told by camp leaders that the area around their tents is inhabited by two unicorns. The activities of these creatures, of which there will be no physical evidence, will be regularly discussed by organisers, yet the children will be asked to prove that the unicorns do not exist. Anyone who manages to prove this will win a £10 note – which features an image of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory – signed by Dawkins, a former professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University.

His domestic policies are hideous failures sure to do lasting damage to America, but at least His foreign policy is suicidal and naive.

“We are surprised at Mr. Obama,” Ahmadinejad said. “Didn’t he say that he was after change?

Every Islamic barbarian in the world is laughing at us. Weakness is provocative. Just remember, all you who voted for The One, the next attack is on your heads.

Update:

David Pryce-Jones sees the mistakes the Mullahs and the Brits, and The One, are making.

The length of time that passes before some British or even American official says that none of this bears on willingness to enter negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program will be the measure of Western defeatism and masochism. And the mullahs will then conclude that they have only to extend the chain of mistakes and lying.

Because no other country, no other civilization in the world, could come close to producing this:

Update:

I just found out that it was edited by the ex boyfriend of a guy I work with. I think there’s a blog post (or a Ph. D. thesis) to be written about the fascination with the original video, which you should see before watching the above mashup. It’s captured the minds of many but, apparently, not so many as in the homosexual community. Knowing why that is would be interesting. I have some theories, but no time to think it out and write it all down just yet.

For any (Hi, mom!) who thought the video was making fun of Mayberry, you should know that I actually like this Beyoncé tune. It’s really catchy, and the lyrics that say “if you’d like an exclusive relationship you’d better marry me” are a lot better than typical hip-hop fare. I think the musical confluence between the two songs is really fun.

Nobody could have read the bill the House passed last night because there is no bill. There apparently wasn’t time to pull together a finished product that accounted for the hundreds of pages of amendments because of Pelosi’s headlong rush to slam this lunacy through before anybody had a chance to learn what was actually in it. So there is no “it” that all the pages and pages of words can be found “in.” Democrats have passed a concept — not a bill.

“Why would [a government plan] drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care; if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

Do you support ObamaCare? If so, please answer the following questions:

In view of the fact that socialized medicine has been a failure everywhere and every time it’s ever been tried, what makes you think it will work here?

What makes you think that a Washington bureaucrat can make better health decisions than you and your own doctor can?

When was the last time that the government actually lowered the price of anything?

When was the last time the government made something better?

Where will Canadians go for quality, timely health care after our system collapses under the jackboots of Obama, Pelosi, et al?

Born in 1955, I’m at the tail end of the baby boom. If the government succeeds in taking over health care, the collapse will come in time for my life to be shortened. So I take this quite personally: The Democrats are trying to kill me. If you are under about 80 years old they are trying to kill you , too. If you’re over 80 they just want to scare you to death.

If you don’t believe me, ask anybody who relies on government-run healthcare in any country in the world.

Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.

Wait — That’s about $12.50 US for 100 rounds? Twelve and a half cents per round? That’s less than half of what you’d pay here in the US for the ammo if you could find any. You could take the cruise, conserve your ammo, and pay for the trip by selling your surplus stateside!

In case you weren’t aware, ammo is scarce in the U.S. ever since some anti-gun moron got elected president. I waited too long to try to stock up, and now I can’t find any.

Scholars on the other side of the debate don’t find the differences in how people talk convincing. All our linguistic utterances are sparse, encoding only a small part of the information we have available. Just because English speakers don’t include the same information in their verbs that Russian and Turkish speakers do doesn’t mean that English speakers aren’t paying attention to the same things; all it means is that they’re not talking about them. It’s possible that everyone thinks the same way, notices the same things, but just talks differently.

Believers in cross-linguistic differences counter that everyone does not pay attention to the same things: if everyone did, one might think it would be easy to learn to speak other languages. Unfortunately, learning a new language (especially one not closely related to those you know) is never easy; it seems to require paying attention to a new set of distinctions. Whether it’s distinguishing modes of being in Spanish, evidentiality in Turkish, or aspect in Russian, learning to speak these languages requires something more than just learning vocabulary: it requires paying attention to the right things in the world so that you have the correct information to include in what you say.

I’m only bilingual, but one of the first things I noticed upon becoming fluent in Spanish was that I thought different things and in different ways in each language. I can’t believe that those who think language doesn’t shape our thoughts are polyglots.

“In theory, it is possible to use the Sudoku method to sequence more than a hundred thousand DNA samples,” says CSHL Professor Gregory Hannon, Ph.D., a genomics expert and leader of the team that invented the “Sudoku” approach. At that level of efficiency, it promises to reduce costs dramatically. A sequencing project that costs upwards of $10 million using conventional methods may be accomplished for $50,000 to $80,000 using DNA Sudoku, he estimates.

“The old theory is that once a memory is wired in your brain, it stays that way,” explained Nader, William Dawson Scholar and EWR Steacie Fellow in the Department of Psychology. “But our discovery shows that once you remember something, it doesn’t stay wired in your brain, it becomes unwired and needs to be restored again – reconsolidation.”

It has four digits. The first is shrunken, while the second is enlarged, as if compensating for the dimunition of the first. And though this transitional creature didn’t yet have the feather-like structures found in later proto-bird dinosaurs, it did have a toothless upper and lower jaw — in other words, a beak.